Posts

One Man Has A Plan To Save Blockbuster By Russ Fischer/April 30, 2010 10:09 am EST One might look at the rise and fall of Blockbuster as a portrait of the hubris of big business in action. The video rental chain dominated the market in the ’90s by having more copies of more titles than smaller stores, and financed the business with late fees and simple brute force. But the business started to change a few years ago, and the company didn’t change with it....

By Russ Fischer/Nov. 23, 2010 5:00 pm EST The film once called Shark Night 3D is now called The Untitled David R. Ellis 3D Shark Thriller, but at least it has a distributor. Relativity Media has picked up domestic rights to the film, which is in post-production right now, and will release it wide on a TDB date in 2011. As we’ve reported before, Donal Logue, Sinqua Walls, Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Katharine McPhee, Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz, Joel David Moore, and Chris Zylka are in the cast....

Robert Zemeckis In Talks To Direct Brian Helgeland-Scripted ‘Here There Be Monsters’ By Russ Fischer/July 26, 2011 4:17 pm EST Since the sinking of the Robert Zemeckis mocap remake of Yellow Submarine, the director has been attached to quite a few projects, many of which are live-action. His likely next film is Flight, starring Denzel Washington as a drug-addled pilot who safely performs a seemingly heroic emergency landing, despite being under the influence during the flight....

Roberto Benigni Confirmed For Woody Allen’s Next By Russ Fischer/May 6, 2011 5:27 pm EST And he also confirmed Deadline’s report that Roberto Benigni would play a part in the movie. We don’t know what that part will be, but he’ll join Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Alec Baldwin.

Steven Spielberg’s TV Series ‘Terra Nova’ Fires Writing Staff By Germain Lussier/Nov. 4, 2010 9:35 am EST Fox’s much anticipated sci-fi series Terra Nova, produced by Steven Spielberg, just suffered another set back. Reports are coming in that most of the writing staff on the show – which was delayed until Fall 2011 – was laid off this week. Show-runner Brandon Braga wasn’t let go though and apparently the layoffs could be temporary....

The Hangover 2: New Photo, Trailer This Week, Full Trailer Will By Peter Sciretta/Feb. 20, 2011 1:00 am EST The Hangover 2 teaser trailer will premiere attached to the Warner Bros-distributed comedy Hall Pass, and mtv reports that it will be released this week online. But you don’t have to wait until next week to get a new glimpse from this comedy sequel — CineMarcado has found a new photo from Todd Phillips’ The Hangover 2, featuring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis reprising their roles as Phil, Stu and Alan....

Toy Story 3 Viral: Pizza Planet Now Hiring Drivers By Peter Sciretta/April 8, 2010 11:30 am EST Our friends at PixarTalk inform us that Disney/Pixar has launched some creative viral marketing to promote the upcoming Toy Story 3 cliffhanger screenings. The flyer, seen above,has been posted at various college campuses around the US. Is Pixar Planet hiring drivers? Nope. The website address attached to the flyer points students to information about the upcoming Toy Story 3 cliffhanger screening at their campus....

Watch 5 Clips And A Featurette From ‘Real Steel’ By Angie Han/Sept. 29, 2011 2:30 pm EST Robot boxing drama Real Steel will be out in about another week, but just in case your love for Hugh Jackman and/or Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots is such that you simply can’t stand to wait that long, DreamWorks has released five new clips (totaling a little under four minutes) and a featurette from the movie....

Watch Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Music Video ‘Not For You’ By Germain Lussier/Oct. 24, 2011 2:30 pm EST Pearl Jam Twenty, a brand new Cameron Crowe movie, is out on DVD today. The documentary is Crowe’s ode not only to the multi-platinum band who came to personify the Nineties grunge movement, but also to music in the last twenty years as a whole. Crowe uses Pearl Jam as the conduit to tell the story of how grunge in the 1990s changed the cultural landscape much in the way rock in the Sixties, disco in the Seventies or metal in the Eighties changed how people lived their lives....

Woody Harrelson Is Haymitch In ‘The Hunger Games’ By Germain Lussier/May 10, 2011 4:27 pm EST We thought it was John C. Reilly, then it was rumored to be Woody Harrelson and – it turns out – the latter is actually true. The Hollywood Reporter says that Harrelson has just landed the plum role of Haymitch Abernathy in Gary Ross’s adaptation of the popular Suzanne Collins young adult novel The Hunger Games....

WTF: ‘Puss In Boots: A Furry Tail,’ Now On DVD By Germain Lussier/Dec. 7, 2011 5:00 am EST We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. No, the Puss in Boots you’re thinking of is not yet on DVD. That film, which is actually pretty fun, feature the voices of Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and Zach Galifianakis and is a spin off of DreamWorks Animation’s massively successful Shrek series....

‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ - What Did You Think? By Russ Fischer/June 22, 2012 4:30 pm EST Two big film releases this week both feature historical settings in which a fantastic story takes place, but Brave and Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter couldn’t be more different. This film is based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Dark Shadows screenwriter) in which Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) is revealed to be a man tortured by the memory of his mother’s death at the hands of a vampire....

‘Brave’ Trailer: A New Look At Pixar’s Almost-Traditional Fairy Tale By Russ Fischer/Nov. 16, 2011 9:09 am EST The teaser trailer for Pixar’s Brave was an absolutely gorgeous thing that showed off the studio’s first female lead, Merida, voiced by Kelly Macdonald. Now here’s the full trailer, which introduces us to the film’s world and the gloriously exaggerated characters that inhabit it. This isn’t one of Pixar’s best trailer efforts, I think, but hopes for Brave remain high....

‘Star Wars’ Designer Ralph McQuarrie Has Died At 82 By Russ Fischer/March 4, 2012 10:05 am EST George Lucas typically gets credit for visualizing the Star Wars universe, and in turn creating the image of popular science fiction that is so pervasive today. But in truth, much of what became Star Wars was truly visualized by conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie, whose pre-production paintings defined the look of many major characters in Star Wars, and specified the general look of the film’s many worlds....

‘Tim And Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’ - A Billion Laughs For Fans, A Few Dozen For Non [Sundance 2012 Video Blog] By Germain Lussier/Jan. 21, 2012 5:09 pm EST Hi, my name is Germain and I’m a Tim and Eric fan. I’ve been a fan for about 4 years, which is when I first discovered their Adult Swim show Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. Their off-the-wall, awkward and weird brand of humor brand is certainly an acquired taste but well worth the trouble....

‘Why Stop Now?’ Trailer: Jesse Eisenberg And Tracy Morgan In A Comic Drug Run By Russ Fischer/July 5, 2012 9:00 am EST When the comedy Why Stop Now? premiered at Sundance back in January it was called Predisposed. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg as a responsible young piano prodigy who holds the family reins because his mother (Melissa Leo) is a drug addict. Her need for drugs leads Eisenberg’s character to the home of her dealer (Tracy Morgan) and into an adventure that has elements reminiscent of Eisenberg’s film 30 Minutes or Less and the recent comedy The Sitter....

Benicio Del Toro Not In ‘Star Trek’ Sequel After All? Khan Still Rumored As Villain By Russ Fischer/Dec. 5, 2011 3:45 pm EST Here’s the downside to trying to develop a highly-anticipated movie in secret, as practiced by J.J. Abrams: rumors will always poke holes whatever shroud producers, directors and studios try to draw around a film. For the last few weeks we’ve been under the impression that Benicio Del Toro would be in the Star Trek sequel that Abrams is prepping right now, and the persistent speculation has been that he would play Khan....

Casting Bits: Diego Luna In ‘Elysium;’ Jason Bateman In ‘Insane Laws;’ Garret Dillahunt In ‘The Boys Of Abu Ghraib’ By Russ Fischer/June 9, 2011 5:14 pm EST The latest addition to Neill Blompkamp’s second feature Elysium is a good one: Diego Luna looks like the choice to play Julio, the closest friend of Matt Damon’s character. In announcing the casting, Variety says the story " revolves around aliens and humans doing battle on earth," which is a slightly different description than we’ve heard in the past....

Cool Stuff: Fight Club And Han Solo In Carbonite Soap By Peter Sciretta/June 17, 2010 3:00 pm EST I’m considering buying a bar of Fight Club soap, just so that when friends/guests use the bathroom in /Film headquarters, they will see the pink bar sitting in the soap dish next to the sink. But if you’re going to go with geek soap, why not go all the way and buy a bar of soap cast in the Han Solo in Carbonite mold from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back?...

Directing Bits: Chan-Wook Park Remaking ‘The Ax’, Tommy Wirkola Joins Gerard Butler’s ‘Afterburn’ By Angie Han/April 18, 2012 3:30 pm EST Having developed a reputation as one of South Korea’s most renown directors, Chan-wook Park is currently putting the finishing touches on his first American outing, Stoker — and he’ll be looking to yet another continent for his next directorial effort The Ax. A remake of Costa-Gavras’ 2005 French film Le couperage, which in turn was based on a novel by Donald Westlake, the story centers around a man who gets laid off and struggles to find another job....